went to put my series III together for the first time after a lot of fixing broken things and such, and wouldn't you know it, I end up stripping a nutplate on the nacelle mount inside the wing...

So, I'll be installing the long bolt modification in my wings in the near future, so if anyone is curious I'll take lots of pictures for ya. For those out there already using long bolts, what size did you use? My friend Daffy seems to be using AN5 bolts, but I have AN4 bolts...

if you don't or have trouble finding long an bolts you can use stainless rod 3/16 or 1/4 in dia and run a thread on each end and drill the rods for saftey pins put a nice taper on the end so it will find the drilled out captured nut easier, i'd even do this for the bolts as well. your main spar will love the small compression tubes. i'm suprised that some are still using the short bolts. my bottom bolts fell out in 1980 and i made 20 sets for the kits we had in stock.

went to put my series III together for the first time after a lot of fixing broken things and such, and wouldn't you know it, I end up stripping a nutplate on the nacelle mount inside the wing...

So, I'll be installing the long bolt modification in my wings in the near future, so if anyone is curious I'll take lots of pictures for ya. For those out there already using long bolts, what size did you use? My friend Daffy seems to be using AN5 bolts, but I have AN4 bolts...

Tyler

The little 4-bolt mounts were originally for the small chainsaw motors. Really this mount system was not all that adequate for the Rotax 185 engines. To run the JPX engines with these small bolts is really not good at all. I would cut the covering off on the top at the motor mount area and add the much stronger long bolt mounts. I think you should be using AN 4 bolts and 1/2 inch tubing with an inner/smaller guide sleeve tube.

This weekend "Daffy" and I tackled the long bolt modification. No instructions, just a lot of coffee, some Al plates, some tubing, and 4 bolts (after I went home to get them after forgetting them...)

I bought two lengths of 4' tubing, one had just a bit bigger ID than the AN4-80 bolts I had (thanks Scott, we got them last February, using them now!), was a 0.065 thick wall, and then a half inch standard tube on the outside.

We opened the wing up on the bottom just big enough to get a hand through on each side of the rib. You only need to cut open one side, and who's gonna see the bottom of the wing!

We dremmeled off the rivet heads that would go underneath the plates, and drilled out the old nut plates and standoffs. Then, we enlarged the old bolt hole to the OD of the inner tube. Then, we measured the 1/2" tube depth we needed to go between the sparcaps. Then, we used a long bolt and a marker to measure the length the inner tube needed to be. Once all were cut, we slid the outer tube in between the sparcaps, "persuaded" the inner tube through the enlarged holes from the outside of the wing, and made sure the top/bottom of the tube was flush with the outsides of the wing skin, slid the plates under the engine nacelle and installed the nacelle with the long bolts. Once all was lined up, we then drilled the plates to mount to the wing top/bottom, removed the nacelle and plates, and cleaned everything up. Vacuum up the new filings and old dead bugs that accumulated over time.

Installed the plates with long rivets with steel nails* and voila - long bolt mod.

Of course my camera is broken so we took absolutely no pictures

However, I would say this job is about a 3 out of 10 on the complexity scale - WAY easier than I ever thought it would be. Total time for the job took about 9 hours total for both wings. A 10 out of 10 being an engine rebuild.

Lining up the plates, the tubes, and the nacelle BEFORE riveting the plates to the wing was the key step I think. A really cool mod, and no more worrying about stripping nutplates.

Oh, the plates I used, I'll measure them and report back - I scoffed them off my crashed 2-seater wings (...not my new 2-seater, an old crashed one I have for parts .

Tyler

* steel nails in the rivets - make sure the rivets you are using have steel nails. A lot of aluminum rivets out there have aluminum nails, and just don't give the same grip strength. same goes for stainless steel rivets, be sure they have steel nails. For the long rivets, we had to buy a package of 1/2" Al rivets AND 1/2" Steel rivets, and then stole the nails out of the steel rivets and put them in the Al heads from the aluminum rivets.

Started installing the factory enclosure with Daffy's help and bottomless pot of coffee. Began with rebuilding some of the attachment hardware to beef it up a bit, but after a lot of tongue in cheek adjusting, the back part looks pretty good. Had to move the drag wires closer to the wheels to get around the pod, and will have to shave some material off the aileron bellcrank under the seat to have it clear the pod, but man does it look sweet! Most amount of time so far has been sanding and painting the nose of the pod (not shown still being painted) and the wheel pant repairs to fix up all the cracks and chips.

The camera is fixed now so I'll post more pics as we go along. I'm hoping that there will be enough room in the nose part to move the rudder pedals in front of the curly fuse tubes at the front to give me more leg room. note the bend in the stick I had to make to increase 'ballroom' specs

Tyler

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